I've lived many lives: serial entrepreneur, technology and CEO advisor, venture capitalist, engineer in the early days of Microsoft. Today I help CEOs in rapid growth and turnaround scenarios to achieve previously unheard of results through seeing into their blind spots, aligning their team and Board, changing challenging behaviors, increasing team accountability and execution. Some call me a Business Strategist, some call me an Executive Coach.

Building on Bateson’s model I’ve found that companies as well as individuals change in six concentric rings. These rings move from Environment (easy and less impactful change) to Core/Culture (more difficult, yet profound, life- or company-altering change). You can work your way inward and ultimately affect the Core/Culture, but if you start inward at the Core/Culture you’ll affect all of the outer rings.

Address the Symptom… or the System?

When a problem presents itself most executives look for point solutions such as “what problem/situation do I need to change?” This is tactical thinking. Maybe you want your people to be more accountable, your sales people to sell more, your engineers to innovate better or your client care to service accounts better.

Solving these problems is addressing the symptom, not the System. It is not looking at the situation systemically. Consider the difference between Western and Eastern medicine: Western is problem and point-solution oriented, and Eastern is preventive and systemic-solution oriented.

Look at the concentric circles above: Environment, Behavior, Capability, are where we see the Symptoms. Beliefs, Identity, Core/Culture are where we have the System.

What happens when you work at the symptom level? You’ll have to deal with the next symptom, and the next symptom, for frikking ever — because it’s the System that causes all the Symptoms.

To get out of this endless cycle we need to look at how our business is being impacted on multiple levels… then we can operate with far more impact once we treat the system—not just the next symptom.

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HI, Christine, very good article, to well articulate the change from deeper level, and extended into the surface, we may call it Five Rings of Change, in most of organizations, CEO could be the owner of culture and change, however, executives, employees and even customers could become brand evangelist by influencing the changes from the root, and CIO & latest Enterprise 2.0 technology can unleash the potential to build up such a powerful change platform. thanks.

Since a company’s Core/Culture is a direct reflection of the CEO and executive team’s own Core/Culture it’s key that they drive the change. Then, yes, the team will be looped into the fold if the “looping” is done with vision and not fear-based techniques. A culture is never done, we need to keep it malleable, so it may evolve. Well-designed cultures that become solid and stiff will fail too over time.

Love the post but really love the topic. Which is why I am such a fan of design thinking. Of course the most important step, I believe, is making sure you’ve actually identified the right problem. It’s not always easy to spot and lots of CEOs need help with this. I agree that it’s the CEO who must drive change — which will never succeed unless/until everyone (including the Board of Directors) in the organization embraces it.

Absolutely! And this is where the work is: getting everyone enrolled. The C-Suite must shape, embrace, model the brave new world and constantly reinforce it by moving it through the organization. Hence the need to start at the Core. The Board needs to get out of the way and let the C-Suite do their job!

Totally agree! What I can’t figure out is why so many people want to hide from the brave new world. I think, despite our problems, we are living in such exciting times — with technology and all the really bright minds out there I truly believe that everything is possible — as long as you have the desire to change. I love your blog and look forward to each post.

Yes and fixing the subterranean issues takes tremendous courage and candor. It’s only uncomfortable briefly… then the top line and bottom line results of a Core/Culture evolution can be seen quickly. I’ll demonstrate this in my next blog.

Loved this article. What I have seen are CEOs and administrative teams who teach their employees about the system approache” but proceed to treat problems as “point and shoot”. They undermine themselves and unknowingly contaminate their goal of improving the culture of the business.

What do you do as middle management, when upper management can’t see or hear that they are the source of employee dissatisfaction.

To paraphrase Gandhi you “be the change you want to see”, my friend. As the performance of your dept starts to soar it will gain attention. People will want to defect from their dysfunctional dept and join yours. Eventually executive mgmt will notice. One of our clients, a Vice President, just did this with tremendous results. Now the company is on the path to change at the System level–and much of the accountability, communication, execution problems are starting to fade. Thanks for your comment! Go forth and succeed!

Christine – congrats. Industrialization of Genomics is an excellent example and opportunity for you. The symptom, predicted years ago, is discussed widely in Forbes and New York Times these days. While it already impacted the US by $796 Bn (Battelle, May 2011), the new industry is presently in an utterly dangerous stall. The supply-demand system is at fault, as full human DNA Sequencing industry already produced a glut of supply, for lack of sufficient demand as DNA Analytics has long been neglected. Your home turf of Greater Silicon Valley may fall in an already global turmoil, if we don’t recover from the stall. Please help! holgentech_at_gmail_dot_com